Author: PORTEUS (Beilby):
Title: Lectures on the Gospel of St. Matthew; Delivered in the Parish Church of St. James, Westminster, in the Years 1798, 1799, 1800, and 1801.
Description: London: Printed for T. Cadell, June. and W. Davies..., 1802. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 216 x 130 mms., pp. xii, 396; v [vi Errata], 331 [332 blank], contemporary tree calf, spines gilt in compartments, green morocco labels. A fine set, from the Gawdy Hall Library, with library shelf mark on upper margin of front paste-down end-paper, and the armorial bookplate of the Rev. John Holmes on the verso of the front free end-paper, and below that the book label of John Sparrow. Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) was born in York but spent part of his early life in America, where his parents were natives of he American colony where they grew tobacco. As a cleric he held a number of posts in the Church of England and was noted for the quality of his sermons; he became Bishop of London in 1787. He was emphatically not in tune with theThomas Paine and other Eruopean Enlightment figures, asserting that "These philosophers reject all idea of Providence and of a moral governor of the world. They ascribe every event to fortune, or to necessity, or to choice: They decried the existence of the soul distinct from the body; they conceived man to be nothing more than a piece of clockwork...." He began giving lectures in St. James's, Piccadilly in 1798, and when these lecture St. Matthew were published in 1802, they were widely reviewed. The Critical Review devoted about ten pages to the lectures, noting that "The lecturer availed himself with the greatest proprieted of this favourable opportunity, for explaining many of the most important truths of religion to those in whose dissipated circles it seemeto have been almost forgotten.... We are willing to believe that many excellent effects have flowed from this excelleltn prelate's labours: if they have not, the fault must have been in the hearers, not in the lecturer." If he is remembered at all these days, it is most likely for his poem Death and his manifestation in Pride and Prejudice as the model for the pompous and self-admiring Rev. William Collins. There are worse fates.

Keywords: religion prose


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